A Mirror Matter Companion?

A new essay by Robert Schoch PhD, associate professor of Natural Sciences at the College of General Studies in Boston, discusses the possible existence of a companion ‘Second Sun’.

Dr Schoch is, of course, the academic who first questioned the weathering patterns on Sphinx; realising that they must have been created by rainfall in an earlier, wetter period from Egypt’s distant past. Here’s the abstract introducing his new article:

“Lately I have found myself thinking about the question of whether or not our Sun might have a companion. Is the Sun part of a binary or multiple star system? Astronomers have estimated that anywhere from 30% to over 80% of all stars may be members of binary or multiple star systems, so why not the Sun? The classic response is that if there was a “Second Sun,” then we should see it! But the situation may not be so simple.”

I understand that the article delves into how the Earth came to have its precessional wobble, and also the missing angular momentum of the solar system. Without having read the complete article, published in ‘Atlantis Rising’ magazine, it seems that Dr Schoch has been partly influenced on Walter Cruttenden’s ‘Lost Star’ book from 2005 (2), as Graham Hancock was at the time. This involved the idea that the barycentre of the solar system is offset from the Sun’s own centre by a larger margin than previously thought, as a result of the gravitational influence of a substantial companion object. The Earth’s own axial precession of the equinoxes occurs over 26,000 years, and Cruttenden proposed that this cycle would be directly linked to the orbit of the companion object.

In my critique at the time, I argued that there was a major problem with Cruttenden’s original hypothesis, namely that the companion object would have to be about 80 Jupiter masses for this to work at the distance he was discussing – which would be a top-of-the-range brown dwarf binary companion (3, 13). It might even extend in mass into the range of red dwarf stars, which Dr Schoch also alludes to in his article. This is simply not realistic, as such a huge object would be highly detectable with even basic equipment in that circumstance. That said, if Planet Nine’s orbital period (14) turns out to be the equivalent of the ‘Great Year’, at about 26,000 years, then this idea will be back on the agenda in a big way – leaving us with only the trifling mystery of how an object this big could conceivably have been missed?

Perhaps in response to this key issue, Mr Cruttenden’s hypothesis evolved into a more nebulous model of a moving solar system over time (4), involving a dynamic relationship between the Sun and the star Sirius (12). I hope Dr Schoch lowers his sights to a sub-stellar companion, like a ultra cool sub-brown dwarf (a Y dwarf in astronomical parlance), which Mr Cruttenden is perhaps also keeping in the wings.

Even if the precession issue turns out to be a red herring, the angular momentum thing is almost certainly a real anomaly, and it’s good to see another researcher (especially one with Schoch’s scientific credentials) seriously consider the sub-stellar companion solution to the solar system’s increasing bag of mysteries. Dr Schoch references the excellent 2015 article by the American engineer R.F. regarding the angular momentum anomaly (5,6) and a proposed Dark Star companion.

So what of this concept of a ‘mirror matter’ companion? The available extract from the magazine article discusses the speculative 2001 paper by R. Foot and Z. Silagadze discussing a potential ‘mirror star’ orbiting the Sun:

“Mirror matter is predicted to exist if parity is an unbroken symmetry of nature. Currently, there is a large amount of evidence that mirror matter actually exists coming from astrophysics and particle physics. One of the most fascinating (but speculative) possibilities is that there is a significant abundance of mirror matter within our solar system. If the mirror matter condensed to form a large body of planetary or stellar mass then there could be interesting observable effects. Indeed studies of long period comets suggest the existence of a solar companion which has escaped direct detection and is therefore a candidate for a mirror body. Nemesis, hypothetical “death star” companion of the Sun, proposed to explain biological mass extinctions, may potentially be a mirror star. We examine the prospects for detecting these objects if they do indeed exist and are made of mirror matter.” (7)

A more recent academic paper, written by V. Netchitailo, a physicist specialising in lasers, includes the potential for stars made of Dark Matter (8), which I reviewed in a previous blog (9). There are also other non-Dark Matter alternatives being considered for massive, enigmatic occulting objects discovered roaming the Milky Way (10). There may be a place for an exotic solution to this mystery, but it does involve a considerable leap in faith. To my mind, an ultra-cool failed star is far more likely to eventually prove to be the solution.